Vansh pathak

What if a child’s first lesson about gender did not come from a lecture, but from a picture in a school textbook? A father preparing food in the kitchen. A mother working alongside him. Girls playing drums or violins. Men and women standing together in a queue for water. A man weaving a flower garland while a woman works beside him. These may appear to be ordinary illustrations. But they can quietly influence how children understand what men and women are “supposed” to do. Andhra Pradesh is now trying to use school education to challenge exactly these assumptions. When textbooks become social mirrors Children do not learn only from written sentences. They also learn from the images surrounding those sentences. If every illustration shows women cooking, cleaning and caring for children while men work outside the home, a child can gradually begin to associate particular responsibilities with particular genders. The opposite can also be true. If textbooks regularly show men pa...

For a long time, mental health was treated as something that belonged primarily inside hospitals and psychiatric clinics. If someone was struggling with anxiety, depression, trauma or another psychological condition, the usual response was to send them to a specialist. But the world is slowly discovering that this model has a major limitation: specialists are limited, while the need for mental-health support is enormous. The challenge becomes even greater in rural and underserved communities, where trained professionals may be far away and social stigma can discourage people from seeking help. Countries are therefore experimenting with different ways of bringing mental-health support closer to ordinary people. Some are using technology. Some are working through schools and communities. Others are training non-specialist healthcare workers to identify problems earlier. And now, India is attempting to bring several of these approaches together through a new BRICS mental-healt...

India’s road network has never been merely about connecting one city to another. Roads determine how quickly people reach workplaces, how efficiently agricultural produce reaches markets, how industries receive raw materials, and how easily an economy moves from one region to another. Now, India is moving towards a different idea of highway development: high-speed corridors designed not simply to carry more vehicles, but to provide uninterrupted, safer and more predictable journeys. The proposed vision involves developing around 50,000 kilometres of high-speed corridors by 2047 , alongside a new set of design principles that classify highways according to the amount of traffic they are expected to carry. This represents a significant shift in thinking. Instead of treating every national highway in broadly similar ways, the design would increasingly depend on the road’s expected traffic volume, surrounding land use, safety requirements and long-term economic importance. From...